Chapter XXXIII: Teikoku Banzai

Then, at last, after three months of marching and wading and six days of fighting, they faced the Russian intrenchments at that place beyond Wiju, which some call, to this day, Hamatan, but which is Yujuho. And the Imperial Guards were there. Shijiro Arisuga, if he were there, also, must have observed with joy that the Guards had the right of the line and would reach the Russian intrenchments first--perhaps off toward Kiuliencheng, where the battery of six pieces was still stubbornly firing. He would know that the Guards must give many happy ones their opportunity for the great red death. Perhaps he could, then, see far enough into the future to know that his own regiment would have the advance and be cut to pieces. It would hurl itself straight upon those stubborn guns. They would tear bloody lanes in its ranks. And Hoshiko would be in the forefront of it.

Kuroki's artillery ceased, Zassuliche's ceased, and that stillness which the soldier knows for the prelude to the assault fell. The two shots from the right was the advance. Zanzi raised his hand, and into the smoke raced Hoshiko with the colors. And she did not forget Arisuga's glory--nor his father's--nor that dream of his when the small white death was closing down upon him. She understood that he was there. And not only he.

His ancestors were looking on--the stately samurai. And hers--the humble eta. His father whom she here redeemed. The emperor with his thousand eyes. The myriads of the gods. The army. The world. The heavens!

Yet she forgot nothing which Arisuga had taught her. She went forward with two others. To her right, to her left, were other threes zigzagging onward. But always she was in their front--steadily, carefully, almost to where the battery of six pieces had fixed a point to reach her, as she passed. There her three dropped and dug. And there they rested until the battery lost them. Up then and out again till the gunners once more noted her like a moving lump of earth and corrected their elevation in her favor. And so twice more. At the last she dared to look back. Behind her stretched two lines of trenches. In the nearest a little fringe of rifle muzzles already showed. She had brought these there. Further back was a thin line of blue racing for the first trenches. She had set these going. Still further back the army in vast masses of blue was moving into position from behind the willows on the bank of the river.

And these waited also upon the little sun-flag on which Hoshiko lay. She felt for the first time the soldier's ecstasy, and she understood better and forgave more the latter years of Arisuga.

She and her two had rested, and had made of their chain of holes a shallow trench. They meant to dig this deeper for those who were to come after them. But the two vast armies they had set in motion began to move with accelerated speed toward each other, and they stopped the trench where it was.

There would be no more digging. Any one might see that. The Russian battery had again found them. One of the guns was exploding shrapnel over their heads. The rest were trying for the thin blue line further back. The willows which yet hid the army were too far away. The moment was ripe. Hoshiko threw aside the spade and everything else which might impede action, and went toward the battery.

From behind her rose the hoarse mongolian yell she had learned to love. There was no need now for concealment. Their own guns had located the battery in her front. A wicked shell had just burst over it. She could hear the song of the fragments. And but three men stood by the gun afterward. The little figure with the sun-flag raced down upon them, firing. It was quite alone. The three gave her a weak, magnanimous cheer and retired, leaving their gun.

Her own men answered from the rear. And even amid the "Banzais" she could hear the wild song of Arisuga. One line clanged in her mad brain:--

"Death-wound spurting--"

Further up the hill a single rapid-fire gun which knew her only as an enemy came into action. It found her at once and riddled her with bullets, as, flag in hand, she leaped into the first of the Russian trenches.

That line was in her last articulate consciousness:--

"Death-wound spurting--"

Perhaps it only remained in her ears--Arisuga's song. But she fancied that she could feel her own warm blood spurting into her own face. Was it as glorious as he had thought it? Or was it only terrible? At that moment, first, she knew. Perhaps she became in that last instant all woman once more. Perhaps she saw something not for mortal eyes. Perhaps she was not as brave with death as she had taught herself to be--gentle Hoshiko! Her lips moaned, piteously, when she ought to have been dead, "Arisuga!"

So that one of the two who had gone forward with her bent hastily and said to the other, with a pleasant smile:--

"He speaks his own name!"

"Nembutsu," answered the other. "Take the flag."

The first one tried, but it held fast in her hand.

"There is no need," he said; "the battle is won. Let him keep it!"

But they covered her face. For the peace, the ecstasy, of a glorious death was not on it! What did she learn in that death-instant?

Others caught at the flag. But her hand held it fast. So that when that dense line of blue which she had started from the willows reached her, at first it parted chivalrously at the flag and passed on either side. But at last it could not part. Some one trod upon the little color-bearer. Then many. The thick-massed line passed over her. It could not be helped. Some one took the flag from her hand and planted it on the Russian redoubt. At last she seemed but part of the earth beneath their feet, and they who trod on her did not even look down.

AFTERWARD